Read the first one of these last year, and much enjoyed it, as I enjoyed this second volume. Here we get sucked a little into stories of ten-years-on and ten-years-before, as well as the political thriller storyline which passes for the main plot. Not as deep and thought-provoking as some comics that I have read, but sometimes it’s enough to read something that is just about interesting people rather than Big Important Issues.

AZERBAIJANI POLICE APPREHENDED IN CONNECTION WITH KIDNAPPINGS. Azerbaijan’s National Security Ministry launched a major operation early on 10 March at multiple locations in and near Baku and in the Gusar Raion in northern Azerbaijan during which it secured the release of Zamira Gadjieva, wife of the president of the International Bank of Azerbaijan, Turan and zerkalo.az reported on 10 and 11 March, respectively. Gadjieva was abducted in Baku a month ago by a group that demanded $20 million for her release. She was found in a concrete bunker belonging to a senior police official who was apprehended together with some 20 other people, seven of them Interior Ministry officials. It is not clear whether the group was also responsible for a series of recent abductions of relatives of prominent officials, none of which have been solved.

…I just discovered that eleven of you cared enough to vote for my livejournal as the “Weblog Most Deserving of Wider Recognition” in the First European Weblog Awards announced back at the start of February. Since I forgot to vote myself, and had no idea that I was even on the shortlist, I am really not at all surprised that I came joint last in the category; but am awfully pleased that eleven people none the less cast their votes for me.

I do mostly positive reviews for my own website, with afewexceptions, basically because I tend to spend money on and enjoy writing about books that I actually like. Writing here, I tend not to go on and on about bad books, but I do sometimes write a lot about books I’ve particularly enjoyed (usually non-fiction, like this, that and the other). However, I’ve also done a few reviews for Infinity Plus, mostofwhichhavebeennegative, basically because I owe it to the editor to at least be honest once he has sent me the book, especially since I haven’t paid for it and it costs him money to send them to me.

What has tended to surprise me when I google the books I don’t like is that most reviews seem to be very positive. I think this basically indicates that most people prefer to write about books they liked than about books they didn’t. No doubt there is also a bit of a phenomenon of authors asking their friends to write nice things about them. Night Travels of the Elven Vampire was an unusual case.

I feel that the reviewer has a duty to be honest about his or her feelings. If you are able to write about the books you don’t like, it makes your opinion of the books you do like more valuable. I think.

Actually a collection, including the title story which shared a Nebula with Zelazny’s “He Who Shapes” (later expanded to The Dream Master). Several of the stories are non-sf – two about serial killers, whcih slightly surprised me, and one about the death of the medieval Serbian ruler Vukasin Mrnjavcevic. All exceedingly good stuff if you like your Aldiss, which I do.

Dave Barry is one of the funniest writers in the English language, but he is best at the length of his newspaper columns – his one novel, Big Trouble, is surprisingly flat. I did like his book on American history, Dave Barry Slept Here. This book, nominally about Washington DC and the US political system, contains some beautiful laugh out loud moments and some bits that are less memorable. One passage that stood out for me was his description of losing Democratic candidates, especially 1988’s Michael Dukakis:

Dukakis was an intelligent man, but he was also a man who had essentially the same range of facial expressions as an iguana. He did not fire up audiences. When he was speaking, the audience expected that at any moment his tongue would come flicking out and snag a passing insect.

For those of us who remember those days, it all seems too true.

The best chapter, though, is the one on South Florida and why the rest of the US should expel it from the Union. Here his humour boils over into sæva indignatio, and is all the better for it. Not quite worth the price I paid for it but fun all the same.

I generally try to act on this: not to draw any bad conclusions about people until I have what seems to me clear evidence that those conclusions are warranted. Sometimes, people take this to mean that I try to be nice to my opponents, and they ask, “Why should we be nice to them?” But to me this isn’t primarily about kindness at all, but about justice.

4) Around Washington, D.C. with Kids, by Kathryn McKay
5) Around New York City with Kids, by Mindy Bailin
6) Around Boston with Kids, by Lisa Oppenheimer

Essential preparation work for a planned family trip to the East Coast in May; vital to locate the best parks, playgrounds and children’s museums in the three cities we plan to visit. Things I’ve never done myself that I would like to do in each city, if not necessarily this time round: the Roosevelt Memorial, the Statue of Liberty, whale-watching.

3) Science Fiction: The Best of 2004, ed. Karen Haber and Jonathan Strahan

13 short stories here, just in time for the Hugo nominations deadline (which is Friday). The only one I’d already read was “The Voluntary State” by Chris Rowe. Others that I particularly enjoyed were “The Lost Pilgrim” by Gene Wolfe, “PeriAndry’s Quest” by Stephen Baxter, “Elector” by Charles Stross, “All of Us Can Almost . . . ” by Carol Emshwiller and “The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid” by Walter Jon Willams. Particularly intrigued by autopope‘s injection of “a last-century EU politician” into his story; presumably Peter Mandelson? Anyway, all the above, and maybe one or two of the others, will go onto my nomination form.